Star Fox Zero, Wii U review: ‘unusually unintuitive controls for a Nintendo title’

23 years after its debut on the Super Nintendo, the Star Fox franchise has taken players on some memorable romps across the vastness of the Lylat System. While Fox McCloud has cemented himself as one of Nintendo's mainstay mascots, along with his anthropomorphic buddies, he doesn’t quite receive the fervent admiration of the likes of Mario or Link.

Star Fox Zero marks the sixth instalment in a series that’s had a hard time finding its groove. 2006’s DS title Star Fox Command was warmly received, but the following 10 years of silence left some fans wondering whether Fox would forever be relegated to making cameos in Super Smash Brothers.

So what's changed for Fox McCloud in the past ten years or so? Other than a new lick of paint and a completely re-tooled control mechanic, not much.

The Lylat system is under threat once again from the antagonistic Andross and it's up to Fox and his furry co-pilots to take him down and bring peace to Corneria and the surrounding system. It's well-trodden ground, but the story has never been the focus of Star Fox - it's simply a means to a fast-paced, shooting-heavy end.

Much like previous entries, Star Fox Zero's levels are composed of on-rails shooting galleries traversed at a breakneck pace, with players pulling off barrel rolls and acquiring power-ups to take down the pesky adversaries.

Other times, levels open up into 'all range mode', where the player is afforded more freedom of movement and objectives usually revolve around taking down a hulking boss or accumulating a specific kill-count before moving on. All of this remains as fun as ever; Zero even splices up the minute-to-minute gameplay with a new bipedal mech, making way for some ground-based skirmishes and light bouts of platforming.

The fast and frantic gameplay comes with a caveat though – the control system. In other Star Fox games the player would manoeuvre the Arwing using a single control mechanism to both aim and fly. Zero changes this. Now you aim and shoot independently using the gamepad motion sensor, while flight is handled entirely by the analogue stick - simple enough on its own perhaps, but that's only half of it.

It's the dual screen management that will have players really turning their heads, quite literally, as they glance back and forth between the gamepad, which offers a first-person cockpit view designed for precise spurts of fire, and the TV, which shows the conventional third- person flight perspective. The resulting difficulty will present an extremely high barrier for most players – and one which many won’t be able to fully overcome, even by the end-credits.

Despite that, finishing the game doesn’t take very long. Zero can be beaten in only a few hours – a real sore point on a title that retails for the best part of £40. However, there are several hidden levels which can be discovered via branching paths as well as a wealth of collectibles to be found throughout the dog fighting campaign.

There’s a questionable sense of familiarity throughout the entire structure and design of the game – many stages are almost complete retreads of the N64 levels, while the opening section sees Fox and the gang spout recognizable one-liners as they soar over the aquamarine waters of Corneria.

That said, it all looks prettier than it did before and there are several special moments that punctuate the déjà vu with an unprecedented sense of scale for the franchise.